Four Tet
The best thing to come out of Putney ever, Keiran Hebden has been making music as Four Tet for the past ten years, having risen to prominence as lead guitarist with post rock band Fridge (who also featured a fella now known as Adem). Though Fridge have recently reformed after a six year hiatus with new shows and records planned, this week, it’s all about Four Tet and the Ringer EP.
Back in ’98 though, things were a little less digestible than Kieran’s most recent release – the first piece of fruit to fall from the Four Tet tree was a 36 minute, 25 second long single called ‘Thirtysixtwentyfive’. It was his first and arguably most notable single release on the Output Recordings label, who would also release a handful of other singles by Four Tet, as well as his debut album Dialogue, before his remix of an Aphex Twin track for a Warp compilation saw his profile rocket (he’s since remixed everyone from Radiohead – for whom he opened a tour for in 2003 - to Black Sabbath), and a longer term deal with Domino Records was struck.
The first gem to arise from the association with Domino was second album Pause in 2001. Its dabbling in the world of glitched up folk and electronic samples quickly lead to the pun-happy UK music press to lump artists such as Keiran, Gravenhurst and Tunng under a banner of ‘folktronica’. Hebden proved that he was able to transcend the label however with the remarkable follow up LP Rounds, released in 2003, again on Domino. Got no Four Tet records? Start with this one. Then get the rest.
After an online only release of a live LP entitled Live In Copenhagen 30th March 2004 (I wonder when and where that took place…), the next step in the career of KH was one of the most fascinating. It saw him embark on a series of improvisational collaborations with legendary jazz drummer Steve Reid, starting off with a pair of gigs in Paris and London, moving on to an appearance on Reid’s Spirit Walk LP before culminating in The Exchange Sessions volumes 1 and 2, a pair of improvisational records the two recorded between 2005 and 2006.
Perhaps influenced by these remarkable sessions, the next Four Tet LP proper, Everything Ecstatic (2005), was a darker and more complex affair than its predecessors, putting the ‘folktronica’ tag to bed, tucking it in and giving it nightmares. It was bolstered by the release of an accompanying DVD set, which featured a video for every track, and a bonus CD of entirely new material.
Up until Rings this week, not counting a further collaboration with Steve Reid under the name of Tongues (a more structured offering from the pair) and again hooking up with Fridge, that was the last new Four Tet material on offer. There was however a fascinating compilation of remixes, (titled Remixes, 2006) which compiled a host of Kieran’s work bending and twisting the sounds of other artists like Bloc Party, Super Furry Animals, Battles, Steve Reich and Kings of Convenience with his own inimitable flair, as well as hosting every official remix of songs by Four Tet by Kieran and other artists, previously only available on vinyl.
But that was then, and this is now, and now is Ringer. And Ringer is corking.
FOURTET.NET: Whaddayaknow, it’s that rarest of things - a site covered in Flash animation (think the Everything Ecstatic cover) that is actually rather pretty instead of just being annoying.
MYSPACE.COM/FOURTETKIERANHEBDEN: Five tracks, including a couple of Four Tet tunes, two duets with Steve Reid and an unreleased BBC session cut, all available for streaming.
KIERANHEBDENANDSTEVEREID.COM: The improvisational pairing’s official site details their entire live history to date, along with a discography and pictures of the pair looking miserable.
FOUR TET - PAUSE: “Pause is a record that will certainly prohibit you from pushing that button on your stereo, which marks the album\'s title: you\'ll just have to listen to the end…”
FOUR TET - ROUNDS: “Without a suffocating barrage of unwelcoming pretension, once again Kieran is shedding his excess creative-energies to ever-effective, palpably unique and dusted-down intrigue and stupefaction…”
FOUR TET - AS SERIOUS AS YOUR LIFE: “Hebden’s latest recording is so abstract that when the provided, rockfeedback review-copy begins skipping in the CD-player, we don’t even realise. Far out….”
FOUR TET - SHE MOVES SHE: “You can almost imagine him tip-toeing downstairs to the basement, aided only by candlelight, to knock together another of his minimalist sound-vignettes following yet another restless few hours in the cabin-bed…”
FRIDGE – LIVE IN LONDON, 2000: “As they all switch instruments and prove to the blasé crowd that there is something to them that others haven’t got, their thirty-five minutes ending on a high, with a virtual musical-battle where the three men are engaged in a contest to see who freaks everyone out the most; our personal opinion is that bassist Kieran Hebden got it in the end…”
KIERAN HEBDEN AND STEVE REID – TONGUES: “Each composition (not ‘song’) here deals solely with one single groove, is the product of one momentarily held mindset, the exploration of a solitary emotion, unrelated to what came before or where it might lead. Things aren’t allowed to develop in to different ideas; it’s about exposing the interesting facets of the music that’s currently being made, right there, right then…”
KIERAN HEBDEN AND STEVE REID – ‘BRAIN’ VIDEO: “This footage from their near legendary Scala show last year is a great way to spend six minutes twenty of anyone’s afternoon…”
KIERAN HEBDEN AND STEVE REID – LIVE IN LONDON, 2007: “When they announce that they’ll take to the stage at a venue that holds hundreds upon hundreds of people to play around with these compositions wholly devoid of verse, structure or any kind of conventional form – they’ll even mess around with gongs, just for a giggle – people buy every last ticket…”
EXHIBITION – KIERAN HEBDEN AND STEVE REID: Sol Archer provides exclusive photos from the above show.
WELCOME TO OUR TV SHOW EPISODE 3: Kieran plays guitar for One Little Flame in Jeremy Warmsley’s living room.
HANDS:
AS SERIOUS AS YOUR LIFE: